Croft comeback king Foster expected to go backwards

Joey Foster was left surprised by his drive from sixth to second in the opening Avon Tyres National FF1600 Championship race at Croft, having expected to go backwards through the field instead.

Twice Formula Ford Festival champion and three time Walter Hayes Trophy winner Foster had qualified his Ray on row three of the grid and made a great start, moving to fourth by the end of lap one before taking second place from Michael Eastwell on the last lap.

But despite his wealth of Formula Ford experience spanning 17 years, Foster was more concerned about keeping his place in the top six, rather than a potential charge to the podium places.

“To start with I didn’t think we were going to be able to hold station actually, because the car didn’t feel great on the out-lap and the warm-up laps,” said Foster.

“It didn’t feel like we had the grip at all. I thought we were going to drop back through the field. So I got my head down, made a good start, gained a couple of places, although I lost one [place] back to Eastwell.

“I tried not to make any mistakes and hang on and all of a sudden, the car started to get better and better. I passed Rory [Smith] and then by the end, the car was hooked up and really flying.”

In the final laps, Foster closed rapidly on both second placed Eastwell and race leader Josh Smith, setting the fastest lap time and snatching second place on the final tour.

“On the last lap I got a good run through the [Jim] Clark curves [Esses], Eastwell made a slight mistake and got into a slide, so I managed to get to the inside for Sunny In.”

Having mastered the damp conditions which featured on Saturday afternoon, Foster is hoping for more of the same weather later today, albeit current forecasts look unlikely to grant his wish.

“If it’s wet I’m very confident we’ve got a really good setup, because we can improve on this massively. I could go a chunk faster again.

“But then I think it’s going to be dry, so who knows! It’s always a fight in Formula Ford if it’s dry.”